Posts by TonyJ

Fix five days of server failure with this one weird trick

Re: always in the last place we look

"...always in the last place we look ..."

Not my comment, but, "why would you keep looking after you found something...?"

Microsoft slips out Windows Server 2022 with extended support for 10 years

"...Yes I could use SCCM but the cost is ridiculous for servers and it is an awful product to use..."

"...I tried really hard to use 2016 Core server and manged to for some scenarios (DHCP servers, WSUS, DCs etc)..."

I am curious why you felt the need for Config Manager (it's actually not a bad product but the UI on both the client and the server is fucking atrocious making it incredibly difficult to do what you want easily) when WSUS will do most of the patch management management that you would need? You even went on to say you tried to use WSUS with core.

Microsoft's way of thinking, by the way, isn't necessarily to use core as the point of management, but rather to have a fire-and-forget system and then use the appropriate consoles from a management workstation where possible.

Re: Subscription

I can beat that... a well know retailer I worked at had a Citrix implementation that had been out of support for close to 10 years. That included, but wasn't limited to, Presentation Server & NetScaler products.

The NetScaler devices themselves were so EoL you couldn't even buy the physical devices, but, in that case at least, they could have updated to a supported version of the OS. Except, they couldn't because the version they were on was the last to work with their ancient version of PS.

Not that it stopped the Citrix sales/service manager from flogging them close to £250k of subscription advantage every year. He was not happy when I canned that and couldn't see what he'd actually done wrong.

Yes, I blame the retailer and their staff for allowing it to happen in the first place, but I also blame him for knowing it was happening and failing to advise appropriately just to get his slice of the pie.

Amazon delays return to office work until 2022 at the earliest

Re: Return to Office

"...I imagine that if your role is task based then WFH is fine but when you're driving change in a business you really need to be with people..."

Nice ego you have there. Reads more as "when you need to intimidate someone to get your own way"

I've done many a project where driving change through is a requirement - by which I mean, driving change where it's generally opposed for various reasons. I've also found it is actually quite rare to have to force someone as opposed to explaining the situation/drivers/bigger picture, though yes, it isn't unheard of to have to say what amounts to "suck it up, buttercup - this is happening with or without you".

Of course, sometimes face-to-face over a coffee with C level bods can be the best way forwards as well but again that tends to be rare.

Teams works just as well (your choice of platform may vary) for those ad-hoc calls to replace the tap on the shoulder chats. I also find that meetings tend to run better over these as there tends to be:

- Much less time wasted at the start of a meeting waiting for the multimedia screens to be connected to

- Ditto waiting for people to dial in over the phone

- It's far easier to mute people when they refuse to stay on track

- Much easier to minute meetings as it can effectively be done in the chat or simply record the meeting if required.

See my post last week about the kinds of boss - treat the people under you well, with respect and enable them to get on with their jobs and worry less about where/how/when they do it as opposed to their results and amazing things tend to come from it.

Electrocution? All part of the service, sir!

I recall the time I was working on a PSU for something. I had it out on the bench, upside down whilst I was diagnosing. I don't recall if it was a scope or multimeter I was using but what I do remember was that just as the service centre manager walked in with some potential new clients in tow, giving them the grand tour, the caps on the PSU chose that exact moment to go bang.

Bizarrely I didn't even jump. They did though.

And then after about a second of silence, the manager pipes up "And of course anything we can't fix, we just kill".

Microsoft's Cloud PCs debut – priced between $20 and $158 a month

Where to start...

Well for one thing they're doing what Citrix and VMware have been doing for years, so this is a bit of catchup (again) but by the sounds of it, they're doing it worse.

Why... why would the base offering have a single vCPU? I don't think anyone with half a brain would expect a performant option with this configuration. Especially on a hypervisor where RAM and disk are consumed far more rapidly than CPU. Even in my home lab, the minimum vCPU count is 2, but more usually 4.

Cost - also, I agree, one of the main disadvantaged of Citrix and VMware offerings - it's just way too expensive to deliver a usable machine.

Use case - I've never been a huge fan of VDI full stop. I just don't see many use cases for it that pure RDS/Server Based Computing models don't fill already. I can think of a small number but on the whole, it's taking a traditionally complex to manage desktop environment, throwing it onto a complex SBC hosting environment and then requiring tons of expensive tier-0 storage on top.

I just think that DaaS/VDI are [expensive and complex] solutions looking for problems.

Microsoft made $167m a day in profit, every day, over the past 12 months

Re: The first RANSOMWARE O.S...

A much lower cost and performnce enhanching upgrade would be an SSD. Even SATA ones perform SO much better than HDD's that it really will breathe life into your daughter's machine.

As of a few months ago as well, the free upgrade to Windows 10 was still working.

Just a thought - if you were to take an image first, as well, you can always roll back but I would definitely look at an SSD as a low cost option.

Undebug my heart: Using Cisco's IOS to take down capitalism – accidentally

Afraid not. The days are long passed since I had hiring responsibilities of any kind.

I'd like to think I am that kind of boss. I've never thrown anyone under the bus. If something has gone wrong, I endeavour to find out what and how etc and even if it was something silly/avoidable, we use it as a learning experience.

I don't try to pull the wool over the eyes of customers - I've forestalled more than a few conflicts by saying "yep... we messed that up, but here's what happened, what we did to fix it and what we've put in place to ensure it never happens again". Luckily if the conversations have turned to "compensation" then I have the "above my pay grade mate - talk to x" to fall back on, though it's rarely actually got that far.

Generally I have have very high standards but if you are working from me I am pretty easy going: I don't care where you work from or what hours you keep (within reason and if you are needed for meetings/on site etc then I expect that much). I do expect deliverables to be delivered when agreed and if there are problems brewing then I want to hear them from you, not when I get a customer calling me to complain/rant. Basically don't take the piss and we will get along fine.

Remember the bloke who was told by Zen Internet to contact his MP about crap service? Yeah, it's still not fixed

I hate to say it but my brief experience with Zen some years ago was just as terrible.

I was getting sub-dialup speeds on my then 8Mbit ADSL.

They were utterly ambivalent to it - they blamed my kit, they blamed openreach, they did everything in their power to avoid trying to fix it. They wouldn't acknowledge that they were replacing a service that ran at around 4.5 - 5Mbits perfectly well for years, just playing the shrugged shoulders game.

Ultimately I exited within the cooling off period. I can't remember who I went to but it was back to normal speeds immediately.

I was genuinely surprised given their outstanding reputation for customer service back then.

What is your greatest weakness? The definitive list of the many kinds of interviewer you will meet in Hell

I've had some horrible interviews

I've faced the interviewers who were determined to prove that they knew more than you, at whatever the cost.

I also once drove about 4 hours for an interview, which was held in a boardroom. The two jokers doing the interviewing sat opposite me but at each corner of the huge boardroom table - so big in fact that if I was facing one of them to talk, the other wasn't in my direct eyeline.

They then proceeded to argue between themselves whilst occasionally snapping a bad tempered question my way. I stood up part way through, told them I didn't know what the hell game they were playing and thanked them for wasting my time and walked out. The agency called me to say they'd offered me the role. I told them not in a million years, and exactly why.

Another one that stuck in my mind was the guy who would ask a question then not give me time to think about the answer - would just go "No? Ok moving on" before I had to say hang on fella - I like to think before I speak, how about giving me the courtesy of letting me? Didn't get that one.

Oh and one I had that went extremely well. Was the personable kind of interview that had no technical content. The manager shook my hand and said "You'll be a great addition to our team". The agency called me whilst I was still in the car park to say the manager didn't think I was technical enough... I actually asked him to call him back and check that he hadn't confused his candidates. I explained what he'd said and that there had, in fact, been literally zero technical questions in the interview.

He called me back a few minutes later to say yeah.. he is adamant it's you he's thinking of. Oh well.

I always use the interview process to assess the company and the people I'll be working with/for and I'm not afraid to say "nah". You spend a long time at work. It's important to be happy there.

Somebody is destined for somewhere hot, and definitely not Coventry

Re: The Usual Suspects

It couldn't fine the last one...?

When I put our companies first mail filter in back in the late 90's it would send the whole email when it found some keywords to another - in this case shared - mailbox for us to review. Not sure in hindsight how they get away with it because there wasn't such a thing as an acceptable use/monitoring agreement policy in place back then.

I had a rather stern female colleague from sales come badgering us aggressively because she wasn't getting emails through from a colleague (if filtered on all emails both internal and external).

I pulled up the shared mailbox they went into and the first one she hadn't received was pure filth. As was the first one from her that was blocked.

She was outraged that it was interfering with her love life (oh - they were married as well, just not to each other). I tried to explain that whilst I really didn't care one way or the other, maybe sending pornographic emails to one another via their corporate accounts wasn't a good idea but she was adamant she was going to report us to the IT Director... as far as I know she never was that daft, but maybe he just laughed her out of his office.

We still got the odd email flagged from them with the same explicit descriptions of what they planned to do to one another so some people just don't learn.

The old New: Windows veteran explains that menu item

Re: Always an important consideration

I am sure there will be cat calls. I've made a few myself over some of the odd UI choices MS have thrown through.

The thing is, my personal feeling is that Windows 7 struck the right balance from a usability perspective.

Windows 8 could have carried that on - indeed, the beta releases had a registry key that would restore the Windows 7 style start menu, but MS decided to try and force a touch-based UI onto a desktop device with a mouse and keyboard (I obviously include laptops in that). Underneath the madness, Windows 8 itself wasn't even a particularly bad OS

Moving things for the sake of moving them - or even moving them but giving no clear guidance or explanations as to why they're being moved just tends to frustrate people.

And remember - we here in the El Reg forums are NOT your typical user by a long stretch. I have had to deal with users who are still so computer illiterate that the slightest of changes can cause them days or weeks of pain to relearn their day to day tasks.

The UI changes from Windows 2000 -> XP - Vista -> 7 were fairly modest. Things tended for the most part to be where people expected them in the language they knew. 8 was a travesty and 8.1 barely made it any better. 10 started to bring things back to a normal that people recognised, but again there was this disconnection with e.g. some things in control panel, some in settings and some even in both! You could resize elements of the UI (I accidentally resized part of the taskbar icons once accidentally with a touchpad and swipe gestures).

Part of the problem seems to be that MS are trying, somewhat unsuccessfully, to make one OS for all but fucking it up.

It shouldn't be hard, either:

Home edition - no domain join, gamebars and other shite that have no place in an enterprise and forced updates (I know that will win me no prizes but I think enough of us have had to deal with the horrors of activation-hacked versions of XP or just never-updated versions of later versions to justify this).

Professional/Workstation/Enterprise (call it what you will) version - can join a domain, has none of the tat, has no telemetry, has control over deploying patches.

Leave the really handy small applications alone like Notepad and Paint and add a decent snipping tool back in because lord knows those things are really really useful when you just need to grab something quickly, note something quickly or are generating e.g. install documents.

MS seem to have really lost sight of the fact that whilst yes, it's expensive and time consuming to do bulk upgrades every 3, 5, 7 years or whatever a place chooses, it's just as important to have a stable system that people understand, can find things, and aren't battling a constant change and that under-pressure support staff aren't having to relearn every 12-18 months!

Something they actually do with LTSC, but oh wait...yeah it isn't a day-to-day general purpose OS apparently.

TL/DR - stop moving stuff for the sake of moving it and/or at least explain why it's being moved :-)

Our Friends Electric: A pair of alternative options for getting around town

Seems like a decent enough idea but can you imagine someone in a completely different country that drives on the wrong side of the road (i.e. the right ;-) ) and who's never seen say a roundabout, trying to navigate around Milton Keynes?

Or London?

And vice versa of course.

Windows 11: What we like and don't like about Microsoft's operating system so far

Re: System requirements?

To be fair that spring-lamb bounciness would've been more down to the SSD than Win 10 itself.

Horses for courses.

There are times when ctrl + alt + del is the only way to get into it, for sure, but most times a quick right-click on the taskbar is quicker.

A start button that moves...

...is just fucking beyond annoying!

I've taken it for a quick spin in a VM (and on the RPI 400 for laughs).

Mostly it's very "meh" but one thing that I know will absolutely drive users up the wall is the moving start button (or whatever MS will rename it this time round).

You get all the icons in the centre of the taskbar by default.

Open any other application and it shunts the start button to the left slightly. Open another and it moves again.

I've seen users who get confused if an icon on their desktop moves by an inch in any direction so I can see this being an issue. Plus muscle memory etc.

On my taskbar, right-click gives a single option only. I am incredibly used to right-clicking there to launch a task manager.

I haven't really dug much more but purely on the early light touch I've had, it's shaping up to be the next Vista.

Windows 11 still doesn't understand our complex lives – and it hurts

I find Teams to be quite clunky and very lacking in the intuitive-use stakes - and the ever changing of bits (moving around parts of the UI for no apparent reason) drive me up the wall.

MS realised, many years, ago that letting people connect Outlook to multiple organisations (i.e. email addresses) was a good thing. I can see no realistic reason to not allow the same feature within Teams and then to have say different coloured windows to show the differences in accounts.

Re: Browser Profiles

So will Windows. Runas/Run as different user.

Florida Man sues Facebook, Twitter, YouTube for account ban

Re: Typical slander

I believe it is libel, not slander, when written.

But then I also believe it needs to be proven to be untrue to be either, which may be a slight problem.

When free and open source actually means £6k-£8k per package: Atos's £136m contract with NHS England

Re: Coincidence?

"...IR35 drives flexible, lower-cost, independent contractors into the arms of the big companies since it rapidly becomes pointless to be anything other than a paid employee with accompanying benefits.

The big companies then have to be used because of a shortage of other options and can continue to charge outrageous prices for simple tasks..."

Whilst some of that is true - IR35 is certainly pushing contractors into the arms of big companies like Atos, this deal and others like it were inked way before that kicked in.

As above, this is simply how these things are written.

It's like "clould" - you have to be very very careful to compare apples with apples, ignoring short term offers to use e.g. current licenses, or be aware that the costs have been worked out assuming everything is shut down outside of 40 core hours a week.

And then there's the assumption that HA, DR, Backup etc etc are all part of the headline price.

All compounded by the small (ha!) fact that in many cases, the very people qualified to tell you that you're about to cost your company/organisation huge amounts are the very ones you are getting rid of...so not much incentive, eh?

Unfortunately of course...

...this is how (especially public sector) outsourced contracts are designed and written from the ground up.

Initially seem cheaper than your own staff. Great.

However, they are very precise in exactly what you can expect to get for that money and anything even vaguely outside of that prescribed detail, you pay.

As others have pointed out, this falls on the shoulders of the people who thought it would be better (read: cheaper) to outsource. They always look at the top line and miss the devil in the detail.

Windows 11: Meet the new OS, same as the old OS (or close enough)

Re: Bloatware

I was about to say that the last time I checked, both Enterprise and Professional versions (which, at the end of the day are the same thing just a different license) both installed the xbox crap as default, so I thought I'd check again now.

And that said, my latest updated Enterprise version (21H1 and Azure AD joined) doesn't have the xbox gamebar enabled by default anymore, so maybe they've finally cottoned on to at least that bullshittery.

Re: Bloatware

Oh this a million times.

It wouldn't be so bad if there was an easy way to remove the shite. There used to be but MS have made it ever more fucking complicated as they go on. In fact, at least a version or two ago it was all but impossible to remove the fucking xbox add-ons.

Why? If a version is Professional or Enterprise it has no place for poxy gaming add-ons of any kind as defaults.

As others have said, pick a control panel OR a settings dialogue and stick to it. Stop shoehorning things in both, or moving them from one to the other here and there.

Add consistencies back into the settings as well - not sure which version it re-appeared in, but it was a relief when "Change adapter options" reappeared in the status of the network card properties screen.

What the fuck happened with the updates? MS moved to these multi-gig single downloads that, they promised, when used with Config Manager meant that the OS could download only the delta components they required. OK - I am good with that. One large download onto SUS/MECM then the OS can decide if it needs 10MB or 1.5GB.

And yet (again I could be a bit out of date here, so happy to be corrected) what seems to actually happen is every frigging copy of Windows 10 gets the full multi-gig patch!

To be honest, the whole "flat" GUI doesn't bother me that much at all. Having had to work with 8 on release, nothing could match that cluster-fuck and anything is an improvement.

To me, Windows 7 was the best version MS have managed to release to date. It was stable, secure (as Windows goes), intuitive to use and actually pretty. Even though real-world testing showed that some functionality was actually slower than in Vista, MS did a good job of making it appear faster.

Oh and I wouldn't even mind the telemetry so much if they'd just be honest about exactly what the hell they're collecting but it's the way it's so opaque that bugs me.

Harassers and bullies succeed in tech because silence is encouraged

Re: Illegal in the UK and EU

I had an ex colleague wander into a Porache dealer. Now to be fair he did generally look like a hobo, but was loaded.

Oh and the dealer was owned by his brother in law.

The salesman that told him that they didn't have anything in his budget was fired after a quick phone call to resolve the issue.

I also had the same treatment when I went to loom around some show homes.

Both these incidents were 20+ years ago and I'd really hope sales drones are trained a bit better these days

Re: Rednecks incoming.....

"...We learned from the best. Has the British Museum given back all the national treasures you lot stole from all those furriners you were bullying yet?...

We are just waiting on you to return the lands to the native Americans, or make right Vietnam.

Or stop interfering in the Middle East, right now, or have schools where kids can go and expect to survive the day without a mass shooting, or be stopped by the police and expect to survive if we aren't white and male...

Then there's the fact that the world was actually pleasantly surprised when a racist murderer with a badge was found guilty, for once, despite his entire crime being recorded... Read that again. The entire thing was caught on film and yet the civilised world was actually taken aback that the perpetrator was found guilty!

Your entire society is broken. Right now, in 2021, but sure, lob rocks about ours from 200+ years ago.

I don't think we are really in a position (as a country) to bully anyone, anymore, but yes, we did have a habit of it. Back then. Your point?

Your whole beef against me has been ad hominem and trying to put me down in your usual bullying and condescending manner - like you tend to do near constantly on here to people, but surprise surprise, I won't be bullied by you... go figure. I find you to be quite deserving of pity.

Re: Rednecks incoming.....

"...Yep. I believe the saying is "might makes right"...

No. It was that bullies will only try to bully those they perceive to be weaker.

Your phrase is more fitting to US foreign policy, I'm afraid.

Re: Rednecks incoming.....

So it's not good for a boss to raise his voice but it's OK for your son to snap someone in two..

That seems to be an opposing set of ideas, now which is it ?

My point was that bullies only bully those weaker than they are. Kind of the very definition of bullying, but you knew exactly what I meant now, didn't you?

Seriously, you are saying that your son that you are so proud of us an uncontrollable killer? Tony, you managed the almost impossible: Being more disgusting than the anonymous red neck.

Are you thick? Because... see point one... of course I wasn't saying he's an uncontrollable killer, but per the above, you knew it.

Both of you should write daily fail headlines because you sure like to miss the point while trying to go for the sensationalism. Well probably not because you both failed. Dismally.

Re: Illegal in the UK and EU

"...NDAs are part of civil law in the UK. Fighting them is impossible for most people, particularly if the other party is a large company or multimillionaire. They have been used by the NHS, councils, universities, housebuilders and many other businesses to silence victims of many kinds..."

In fact, as reported here in El Reg just the other week - the guy who won £1.7m who was offered £60k to shut up and go away - providing he signed a gagging clause - sorry, NDA.

He told them to shove it and won in court.

But at the time, I did wonder how often they or other gambling sites may have used a similar tactic, as ultimately, we'd never find out. Are there dozens of potential millionaires out there that simply took a small (but still significantly large, to them) sum of money, thereby saving the firms huge sums overall?

Re: Rednecks incoming.....

"...We have courts for this stuff!

It's not your job to protect other people from abuse!

Stop being Woke!

When you own the libs they always scream "harrassment!"..."

I've seen some pricks in my time but you're an entire cactus.

First of all - you are out and out wrong. It is everyone's duty of care to ensure that everyone else is safe at work, from a H&S perspective up to actually being a decent human being (you are clearly lagging behind here).

I don't know you, but I can almost guarantee you think shouting at people is a perfectly good management technique. It isn't - it's used by the bullying, the weak and weak of personality. You exhibit all those traits in a few simple lines.

You're also a coward in the literal sense of the word. Proven by your very comment being posted anonymously and by your trolling, keyboard-warrior'esque language. Equally I imagine that you wouldn't dare shout at someone like, say, my son, for example (6'4", elite athlete (rugby player) and ex-British and European BJJ champion) because he'd literally snap you in two. As would, I suspect a good percentage of the readership here.

Disgust aside explain something - if someone is bullied and then gagged, how and when do the courts actually get involved?

Re: I presume your comments are specific to the UK?

I think it goes deeper than that. It is more of a

"...we will pay you to keep your mouth shut (now that "payment" of course can vary from an actual payment [and the last time I checked, bribery was illegal in and of itself] to you keep your job and/or your reputation)."

With a good dose of "think about it... you're a nobody about to accuse the <insert almost always senior member of staff> of the company... who would ever believe you? And when you lose because we have deeper pockets and nastier lawyers, you will never ever work again"

And then the kicker "Great. Now sign this NDA. Which is, of course, utterly legally binding and should you ever breathe a word of this to anyone [even a counselor] then we will sue you into non existence, ensuring that you are financially and emotionally ruined for life".

Where in this case, NDA directly translates as "Gagging order".

To me, this is simple. There needs to be an update to employment law that states NDA's are fine where required for work being completed, but only for work completed. Any kind of gagging clause, in any way, shape or form, in relation to any kind of complaint about the working environment and/or staff needs to be made illegal. End of story. Well not quite - even the mere suggestion of one should be made an illegal, sackable offense.

I've had to deal with my share of bullies over the years in work places.

Thankfully I'm neither a shrinking violet nor shy about defending myself so it falls flat on its face with me (other than once losing my temper and threatening a very senior member of staff that if he persisted in shouting abuse at me over a desk, simply because he'd missed me off the email chain (compounded with "well don't you talk to colleagues you fucking moron?*") I would rip his ears off and shove them up his arse. Sometimes open offices with witnesses are a great thing.

*I might add that he'd changed a procedure, told the other members of the team and forgotten to cc me in. Apparently, I was supposed to somehow just know that he'd changed it, or should have known to ask if he'd changed it... hmm... 'k then.

Seagate UK customer stung by VAT on replacement drive shipped via the Netherlands

Re: I don't understand something

Why? An item of equal value is returned hence there has been no financial transaction. He didn't buy the second drive, it was replaced under warranty. Net zero transaction.

I genuinely don't get it.

We've finally hit Peak Bork: Microsoft man reveals home-grown welcome back BSOD at Redmond HQ

"...We contacted Microsoft to ask what had befallen the unfortunate display but the company's communications team has yet to respond - doubtless cowering from the bork stalking the hallways..."

Or rhe FBI haven't forwarded the email yet...

Canonical and Microsoft get cosier with Active Directory integration in Ubuntu 21.04

Re: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish......

So... the flip side being show me your proof they exist.

No corporate is guilt free and I wasn't saying it. In fact if you read through my posts I've been very critical of MS at various times.

How about attacking the argument, not the person?

Re: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish......

I believe (happy to be corrected) that MS are the biggest (or one of) contributor to open source and have been for a long time now... what have they extended? Where is the extinction attempt since they cut put the cancer that was Ballmer? I mean seriously... how would MS even begin to attempt to extinguish Linux now? It's just silly, sharing 21 year old documents and expecting them to be relevant now.

I know it'll be downvoted for this, but one of the biggest issues I have with Linux lovers on here is that many don't seem to able to move past the Microsoft - both products and the company itself - of 2 or 3 decades ago. And you still run the choice is good mantra, as long as that choice broadly aligns with your own...

If you have recent, actual, experience of their products and still don't like it etc then fine, and I respect that,but at least you're comparing apples with apples.

Beloved pixel pusher Paint prepares to join Notepad for updates from Microsoft Store

Re: I'm pissed off...

Yeah Ninite is usually the first stop for me post-fresh install. You're right - it's how I found Greenshot.

Re: I'm pissed off...

"...> It's one of the first things I load on any new computer.

I see your VLC and raise you:

Notepad --> Notepad++

Paint --> Paint.Net..."

And snipping tool (of whichever variant) --> Greenshot

Wormhole encrypted file transfer app reboots Firefox Send after Mozilla fled

Re: CPU usage

"...Why does clicking on https://wormhole.app/ put my 4 core i5 into a stress test?!?

Before even uploading anything.

This is using Firefox 87.0..."

Christ you're not wrong - it adds a good 30% CPU load to my quad core i7-9750H CPU.

Hmm second time of launching was more in the 10% range but still...

Bell Labs transfers copyright of influential ‘Plan 9’ OS to new foundation

Re: Alot of that...

"...Then there's the issue of legacy compatibility. No-one needs to support anything older than a couple of years right?...

I know this was tongue in cheek, but part of me responded "You'd think, right?"

Bane of my life with the types of customers I work with. Want everything modernised...good. Oh but we need to run our 20+ year old crap application the work experience kid knocked up as a bit of a project we threw their way.

What could be worse than killing a golden goose? Killing someone else's golden goose

Re: At JGH re: checks...

"..If a foreign bank sends me money via the post, might my Czek cheque be in the mail? =-)p.."

You should probably check...

Re: One place I workded...

""EA" means in this case??"

Enterprise Architect

One place I workded...

...I noticed that they were paying for Citrix Subscription Advantage for products that Citrix themselves could no longer support, to the tune of over £150k per year.

And that of the 8 NetScalder SDX's several were on a shelf, turned off. Again over £120K of SA that they couldn't use and didn''t need to since they had plenty of spares.

Then there was the near catastrophic decision I averted for them when their EA almost pulled the trigger on Citrix Cloud licensing, under the mistaken belief that it included all the licenses required for OS's and clients - a near £400k cock up that would've put the company at real risk had it gone through.

Of course, as they say, no good deed goes unnoticed and the EA was a spiteful bastard that ensured my time there became limited due to my refusal to take his mistakes on as my own.

Partial beer print horror as Microsoft's printer bug fix, er, doesn't

Re: Tired of MS

"...It's the perfect storm isn't it. A version of Windows that force-installs updates, combined with a woeful lack of QA testing for those aforementioned updates.

People with sufficient skill know how to wrestle some control of the update process back from MS so that patches are only installed once we're pretty sure they're trouble free. But for all the normal folk out there, they are left picking up the pieces from yet more crap coding from MS..."

I wouldn't argue that the QA is woeful and needs to be sorted (like it has for a long time now with updates), but, (and I've been downvoted for saying this before, but I stand by it), having spent an inordinate amount of time over the years with friends, family and neighbours that have never patched their systems (and in some cases, can't, patch them because they used godawful activation hacks, I would prefer to deal with the fallout of borked updates compared to the malware-riddled pieces of shit they become because of a lack of said patches.

And to that end at least, I actually believe home users should get automatically patched.

Corporate users, no - they should have the understanding. If you're using KMS keys then it should allow control of the patching by the org.

From Maidenhead to Morocco: In a change to the scheduled programming, we bring you The On Call of Dreams

Re: On call Legend

I remember being in Ibiza the same year as that documentary about Manumission aired.

Clubs then (mid-late 90's) were charging the equivalent of £15 for a bottle of pils, let alone anything else.

Big problem: Nominet members won't know how many votes they're casting in decision to oust CEO, chair

Re: You know what will be transparent?

"...The angry mob breaking down your doors to drag you out, hang you from the nearest lamp post, & set your worthless arses on fire.

I'll be on the sidelines selling sausages in a bun, popcorn, camp chairs, Smores ingredients, flaming torches, buckets of pitch, & any other thing I can make a profit offering to said mob.

Signed, CMOT Dibbler..."

Sausages on a stick, surely??

Google halves Android app fee to 15% for lower-earning devs... who aren't responsible for majority of revenue anyway

Re: Most apps are trash anyway

I'm ok, Jack...

Following Supreme Court ruling, Uber UK recognizes drivers as workers, offers min wage, holiday pay, pension

Re: Fuck uber

One of my local private hire firms has an app. You can book on it, see the price you'll pay and pay upfront if you so wish.

Their drivers are smart and (usually) pleasant and polite and their taxi's are always spotlessly clean and warm.

You do pay a slight premium over the other PH firms around here but you get all the convenience of Uber, knowing that you are using a firm that pays it's drivers fairly etc.

Citrix preps ‘Project Bifrost’ to make cloud-to-cloud moves a rainbow ride

I wonder...

...if this builds on their App Layering technology.

It will be interesting to see.

Don't be a fool, cover your tool: How IBM's mighty XT keyboard was felled by toxic atmosphere of the '80s

Re: Smoking

And these are the things smokers don't usually realise. It really doesn't matter how effective the filtration systems are, it permeates into everything and it stinks! Because of the damage to a smokers' sense of taste and smell they really don't realise how bad it is.

I remember getting home from pubs and restaurants before the smoking ban and my clothes absolutely reeking of tobacco and making everything else in my wash basket smell just as bad.

It staggers me now but when I was a kid, my parents used to smoke in the car with me and my sister in the back - I can still remember how sick it used to make me feel but neither of them would stop. They wouldn't dream of doing it now with their grandkids in the car (well my mum wouldn't - my dad quit cold turkey 30+ years ago).

"...you would not believe how much they cost..."

you would not believe how much they cost the NHS.

FITFY